--- product_id: 7927535 title: "Dora Bruder" price: "€ 38.57" currency: EUR in_stock: true reviews_count: 10 url: https://www.desertcart.fr/products/7927535-dora-bruder store_origin: FR region: France --- # Dora Bruder **Price:** € 38.57 **Availability:** ✅ In Stock ## Quick Answers - **What is this?** Dora Bruder - **How much does it cost?** € 38.57 with free shipping - **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship - **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.fr](https://www.desertcart.fr/products/7927535-dora-bruder) ## Best For - Customers looking for quality international products ## Why This Product - Free international shipping included - Worldwide delivery with tracking - 15-day hassle-free returns ## Description 2014 Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature Patrick Modiano opens Dora Bruder by telling how in 1988 he stumbled across an ad in the personal columns of the New Year's Eve 1941 edition of Paris Soir . Placed by the parents of a 15-year-old Jewish girl, Dora Bruder, who had run away from her Catholic boarding school, the ad sets Modiano off on a quest to find out everything he can about Dora and why, at the height of German reprisals, she ran away on a bitterly cold day from the people hiding her. He finds only one other official mention of her name on a list of Jews deported from Paris to Auschwitz in September 1942. With no knowledge of Dora Bruder aside from these two records, Modiano continues to dig for fragments from Dora's past. What little he discovers in official records and through remaining family members, becomes a meditation on the immense losses of the peroid—lost people, lost stories, and lost history. Modiano delivers a moving account of the ten-year investigation that took him back to the sights and sounds of Paris under the Nazi Occupation and the paranoia of the Pétain regime as he tries to find connections to Dora. In his efforts to exhume her from the past, Modiano realizes that he must come to terms with the specters of his own troubled adolescence. The result, a montage of creative and historical material, is Modiano's personal rumination on loss, both memoir and memorial. Review: Dora Bruder: a moving, unforgettable memoir of Paris's painful WW2 occupation - Within the large oeuvre of Patrick Modiano, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2014, "Dora Bruder" stands out in having a historical figure as its protagonist. Dora, after whom a passageway in the 18th arrondissement of Paris was recently named, was born in the capital, the sole child of Jewish emigres. When 15 years old in late 1941, her family reported her missing from her Catholic boarding school, and it is possible that she was but a few years older when her life ended during the war years of Nazi occupation. Dora was rounded up in the deportation of French Jews and sent to Auschwitz. But then the canvas on which the outlines of Dora's life was painted goes blank. "Dora Bruder" is arguably Modiano's most haunting, unforgettable, and beautifully written book. And this is notable because few people who had known Dora still lived in 1988 when the author--his interest piqued by a December 1941 missing persons notice in "Paris-Soir"-- began his research. Intimate details of the young Jewish girl's days and pleasures, snippets of conversation, and even records penned by her hand were all totally lacking. Yet Modiano makes me weep for the loss of Dora. Modiano achieved this thanks to his skill for reading the neighborhoods and buildings of the Paris that Dora knew and his tenacity in unearthing documentary information preserved over decades by the obsessively bureaucratic security services of France. That the reader is able to join Modiano in walking in Dora's shoes results from his having traced the exact streets and metro lines she likely used. American readers reviewing Modiano's books are sometimes puzzled and dismayed by of the amount of time devoted to naming the capital city's streets and providing precise locations for even the most trivial of events. In this case, however, the author's attention to such details reveals how much one can glean by revisiting the physical environments in which a person lived. A further sense of reality regarding Dora's life is imparted by text that describes the atmosphere, and even the weather, of Paris as Dora would have known it. Take, for example, a paragraph that runs from page 73 to 74. "One way not to lose all touch with Dora Bruder over this period would be to report on the changes in the weather. The first snow fell on 4 November 1941. Winter got off to a cold start on 22 December. On 29 December, the temperature dropped still further, and windowpanes were covered with a thin coating of ice. From 13 January inwards, the cold became Siberian." It was at this time that Dora had run away from school. Interleaved with writing about Dora Bruder, Modiano provides information about his relationship with a distant father, a Jew who escaped Nazi deportation and survived the occupation as a black marketer. Further material is offered documenting Modiano's own experiences as a young man and, as the author is wont to do, the chronological sequencing of this information follows a scrambled sequence. For those new to Modiano's work, this pattern is sometimes confusing, but for those of us now well along reading the author, it offers a charm all its own. Review: Real...not a novel - "Dora Bruder", by French author Patrick Modiano, is not a novel, though some reviews and articles refer to it as a novel. It's a true story, written in meandering form, about a 15 year old Jewish girl who is a victim of the Holocaust. This book was written in the 1990'a and all the dates referred to as "50 years ago" or so, are from Modiano's search, begun in 1988. Modiano is able to track down surviving relatives of the Brudners and he includes several pictures of Dora and her parents. We see the actual face of a Holocaust victim, which makes her much more real than simple text. Dora Bruder was an only child of two Austrian Jews who had settled in Paris. They were not particularly prosperous but were able to sustain a life in the city. They sent Dora to a Catholic convent school, beginning in 1940 as the Germans were invading France, but she "left" after a year and a half as a student. By leaving, she lost any protection that she could have been afforded by hiding in the convent. At the same time, Modiano's Jewish father was also trying to evade the occupying Germans. He survived, but Dora Bruder, her parents, and thousands of other Jews did not. Modiano's book is short and the text does meander quite a lot between the "Dora" story and his story of his relationship with his father. I was intrigued by the comparison between Dora and his father. I'd also like to recommend Ethan Mordden's superb book, "One Day in France", which is a novel based on the very real massacre at the French village of Oradour-sur-Glane, days after the D-Day invasion. The murders of 640 townspeople by members of the Waffen-SS was in revenge of partisan killings of German soldiers. ## Technical Specifications | Specification | Value | |---------------|-------| | Best Sellers Rank | #250,742 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #108 in Jewish Historical Fiction #248 in Jewish Literature & Fiction #866 in Biographical & Autofiction | | Customer Reviews | 4.0 out of 5 stars 356 Reviews | ## Images ![Dora Bruder - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61B9Vaq0ZcL.jpg) ## Customer Reviews ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Dora Bruder: a moving, unforgettable memoir of Paris's painful WW2 occupation *by M***D on July 26, 2017* Within the large oeuvre of Patrick Modiano, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2014, "Dora Bruder" stands out in having a historical figure as its protagonist. Dora, after whom a passageway in the 18th arrondissement of Paris was recently named, was born in the capital, the sole child of Jewish emigres. When 15 years old in late 1941, her family reported her missing from her Catholic boarding school, and it is possible that she was but a few years older when her life ended during the war years of Nazi occupation. Dora was rounded up in the deportation of French Jews and sent to Auschwitz. But then the canvas on which the outlines of Dora's life was painted goes blank. "Dora Bruder" is arguably Modiano's most haunting, unforgettable, and beautifully written book. And this is notable because few people who had known Dora still lived in 1988 when the author--his interest piqued by a December 1941 missing persons notice in "Paris-Soir"-- began his research. Intimate details of the young Jewish girl's days and pleasures, snippets of conversation, and even records penned by her hand were all totally lacking. Yet Modiano makes me weep for the loss of Dora. Modiano achieved this thanks to his skill for reading the neighborhoods and buildings of the Paris that Dora knew and his tenacity in unearthing documentary information preserved over decades by the obsessively bureaucratic security services of France. That the reader is able to join Modiano in walking in Dora's shoes results from his having traced the exact streets and metro lines she likely used. American readers reviewing Modiano's books are sometimes puzzled and dismayed by of the amount of time devoted to naming the capital city's streets and providing precise locations for even the most trivial of events. In this case, however, the author's attention to such details reveals how much one can glean by revisiting the physical environments in which a person lived. A further sense of reality regarding Dora's life is imparted by text that describes the atmosphere, and even the weather, of Paris as Dora would have known it. Take, for example, a paragraph that runs from page 73 to 74. "One way not to lose all touch with Dora Bruder over this period would be to report on the changes in the weather. The first snow fell on 4 November 1941. Winter got off to a cold start on 22 December. On 29 December, the temperature dropped still further, and windowpanes were covered with a thin coating of ice. From 13 January inwards, the cold became Siberian." It was at this time that Dora had run away from school. Interleaved with writing about Dora Bruder, Modiano provides information about his relationship with a distant father, a Jew who escaped Nazi deportation and survived the occupation as a black marketer. Further material is offered documenting Modiano's own experiences as a young man and, as the author is wont to do, the chronological sequencing of this information follows a scrambled sequence. For those new to Modiano's work, this pattern is sometimes confusing, but for those of us now well along reading the author, it offers a charm all its own. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Real...not a novel *by G***L on August 23, 2019* "Dora Bruder", by French author Patrick Modiano, is not a novel, though some reviews and articles refer to it as a novel. It's a true story, written in meandering form, about a 15 year old Jewish girl who is a victim of the Holocaust. This book was written in the 1990'a and all the dates referred to as "50 years ago" or so, are from Modiano's search, begun in 1988. Modiano is able to track down surviving relatives of the Brudners and he includes several pictures of Dora and her parents. We see the actual face of a Holocaust victim, which makes her much more real than simple text. Dora Bruder was an only child of two Austrian Jews who had settled in Paris. They were not particularly prosperous but were able to sustain a life in the city. They sent Dora to a Catholic convent school, beginning in 1940 as the Germans were invading France, but she "left" after a year and a half as a student. By leaving, she lost any protection that she could have been afforded by hiding in the convent. At the same time, Modiano's Jewish father was also trying to evade the occupying Germans. He survived, but Dora Bruder, her parents, and thousands of other Jews did not. Modiano's book is short and the text does meander quite a lot between the "Dora" story and his story of his relationship with his father. I was intrigued by the comparison between Dora and his father. I'd also like to recommend Ethan Mordden's superb book, "One Day in France", which is a novel based on the very real massacre at the French village of Oradour-sur-Glane, days after the D-Day invasion. The murders of 640 townspeople by members of the Waffen-SS was in revenge of partisan killings of German soldiers. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ A very moving book that recovers the fate of a lost French-Jewish girl *by J***Y on July 4, 2015* Modiano describes his dogged pursuit of what happened to a young Jew caught in the nightmare machinery of occupied France and the German killing machine that was the Holocaust. He embarks on his quest upon reading a 1941 notice in a wartime newspaper (Paris Soir) seeking information about a missing child. He find out unexpected things. He sometimes finds only blind alleys when information leads nowhere. He makes educated surmises to interpolate. He traces Dora Bruder to her death in Auschwitz. It is a short but moving book. Modiano does for Dora Bruder something like what Daniel Mendelsohn did for his relatives the Jägers in "The Lost: A Search for Six of the Six Million" -- though without the detailed specificity of what Mendelsohn finds out. Still, the impulse is more or less the same: to see that these people's fates are known and their deaths do not remain obscure. Modiano's motivation is a moving and humane impulse. It recalls the inscription at the Mémorial des Martyrs de la Déportation, the monument that De Gaulle dedicated in 1962 on the Île de la Cité in Paris: “Ils allèrent à l'autre bout de la terre et ils ne sont pas revenus.” ("They went to the other end of the earth and they have not returned.") Like the Jägers, Dora Bruder did not return, but, like Mendelsohn, Modiano followed her and found out where she went. So her life, though it ended bitterly, has not been lost without a trace. Modiano's work is a triumph over the German occupiers of France and their French collaborators. --- ## Why Shop on Desertcart? - 🛒 **Trusted by 1.3+ Million Shoppers** — Serving international shoppers since 2016 - 🌍 **Shop Globally** — Access 737+ million products across 21 categories - 💰 **No Hidden Fees** — All customs, duties, and taxes included in the price - 🔄 **15-Day Free Returns** — Hassle-free returns (30 days for PRO members) - 🔒 **Secure Payments** — Trusted payment options with buyer protection - ⭐ **TrustPilot Rated 4.5/5** — Based on 8,000+ happy customer reviews **Shop now:** [https://www.desertcart.fr/products/7927535-dora-bruder](https://www.desertcart.fr/products/7927535-dora-bruder) --- *Product available on Desertcart France* *Store origin: FR* *Last updated: 2026-05-23*